Steve Geppi is one of the most popular and richest Novelist who was born on January 24, 1950 in Little Italy, United States. According to Mile High Comics’ Chuck Rozanski as “brilliant,” Steve Geppi was a subdistributor to Hal Schuster in the late 1970s. In what Rozanski calls an “incredibly risky and gutsy move,” Geppi was able to take over the New Media/Irjax’s “office and warehouse space” and, as recollected by Rozanski was forced the responsibility to “sort out the good customers from the bad overnight” in negotiations with creditors to carry on Schuster’s distribution under the name of Diamond Comic Distribution. Fast forward, said Rozanski, “[h]e went from being a retailer in Baltimore to having warehouses all over the place.” Geppi himself, as per Mike Friedrich “was someone whose work you could trust, who had a good reputation for honesty in the field [as a collector, retailer and distributor].”
Geppi and family vacationed every summer in Wildwood, New Jersey. In the summer of 1972, his nephew (Georgie Kues) was “reading an old Batman comic book” in the rain, and Geppi found that “reading that Batman brought [back his childhood memories of comics]… He still loved comics [and] figured there were a lot of guys who would feel the same way.” Buying “a batch of old comics from a woman on his mail route,” he was soon “spending weekends at comic shows, buying and trading with other fans.” After “setting up at comic book conventions as a part-time dealer,” he ultimately realised that he could make more money that way than at his job with the postal services.
In 1974, Geppi announced his intention to quit his job and “open a comic book store.” Geppi recalls that his colleagues “all laughed their heads off,” while The Journal of Antiques and Collectibles quoted him as saying:
It is the (Official) Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide originally released through Robert M. Overstreet in 1970, as one of the first authorities regarding American Comic book industry grade as well as collection values. Overstreet was sold in 1994 to Gemstone In 1994 however, he kept on in the role of “serve as author and/or publisher of Geppi’s Entertainment Publishing & Auctions’ line of books.” The publication of the Price Guide Price Guide was taken over by Gemstone in 1998. Gemstone began publishing the guide in the year 2000, and the editions from 1998 up to date has since been (co-)published in Gemstone’s Gemstone publications. The 39th edition of the guide was released through Gemstone Publishing in 2009.
After leaving school to help his mother, in 1964 between 1964 and 1969, he worked various “manual-labor jobs,” while “dodging truant officers.” Then he “enrolled in vocational school,” but was not at all challenged. He later recalled the fact that “I had missed 45 days at the half, and I was on the honor roll” but then was kicked out. Then he was employed by the company of Lester White’s Detecto Electronics “install[ing] burglar alarms and doorbells,” prior to being drafted into the U.S. Postal Service as a letter carrier. At the age of 19, Geppi was working “the crap jobs,” (loading trucks and substituting others), Geppi was “starting a family… [and] needed… solid, steady work, something with a future.” In a “few years” after taking the exam for a carrier Geppi was given an undetermined “route in suburban Maryland,” and “[t]he Postal Service kept raising salaries [and] Geppi’s pay tripled in five years,” making it possible for Geppi to relocate “his growing family out to the suburbs.” In the beginning of the seventies, Geppi was part in the Jehovah’s Witnesses and was a regular participant in many Bible studies at home for free. If he’s still associated with the organization isn’t known.
After Phil Seuling established the direct market c.1972, he maintained a virtual (if ill-run) monopoly on comics distribution until a lawsuit brought by New Media/Irjax in 1978. Irjax, “a paper distribution company formed by Hal Schuster… his father, Irwin, and his brother, Jack” acchieved “a sizeable chunk of the direct-distribution market,” but ultimately “filed for Chapter Seven bankruptcy in early 1982.”
